Realism: Invictus

Historia est vitae magistra

Overview

Realism: Invictus is a mod for Sid Meier's Civilization IV that brings a different feel to the game through its realistic visual appearance, deepened game mechanics, refined play balance, and diversity of civilization-specific content. It is an open-source community project that is free to download and play, but it requires a legal copy of Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword to be installed.

More realistic feel

Original game is in many cases either oversimplifying things, or even plain wrong. A couple of classical examples are Persian “Immortals” (who historically had very little to do with how they are depicted in Civ4) and Roman “Praetorians” (unlike other legionaries, praetorians were never intended for taking part in military campaigns). Our goal was to enhance the historical feel by correcting those oversights. You will notice that many things, up to uniform details, are historically correct (or at least more correct, anyway).

More diversity equals more fun

A civilization in the original game was characterized by one unique unit and one unique building; basically, that was it – Aztecs were otherwise almost completely identical to, say, French. Moreover, many civilizations were limited to only one leader. We aim to make player’s experience more unique each time, and all civilizations now have a sizeable set of buildings and units unique to them (actually, most units for every particular civilization will have some differences from their default counterparts) – and several leaders for each, in many cases with starkly differing personalities.

Careful testing for better balance

We have been balancing the added features for literally years to ensure that tons of our added content function smoothly and give a balanced and rewarding gameplay experience both for beginner players (at lower difficulty levels) and for veterans wanting more challenge (at higher difficulty levels). We tried to accommodate for many different possible gameplay strategies and provide an enjoyable experience for each of them.

A better-looking game is a better game

One of our main priorities when adding new content is ensuring its proper quality. We feel that over years it has resulted in our mod becoming one of the best looking ones out there.

Community effort

While the mod itself is run by a relatively small team (of no more than 5 people at any given moment), it includes a vast assembly of things created by Civ4 great modding community, from individual art pieces to mod components. Likewise, we always tried to be an active contributor to the community.

Feedback, Support, Troubleshooting

Known Issues

32-bit Disclaimer

If you have a 32-bit OS, you will not be able to successfully finish a World Map game. 32-bit OS memory handling is such that after the savegame size exceeds certain size, the game starts to randomly crash from Memory Allocation Failure (MAF). There is no way to prevent this from happening sooner or later if you are playing World Map on a 32-bit OS. There is nothing we can do with this sad fact, as it is inherent in 32-bit architecture itself and the way Civ 4 engine works with it, and there is no fix for that available a modder. Only play World Map if you have a 64-bit OS (or are content with playing roughly until Medieval era on a 32-bit OS)! Please restrict yourself to playing random maps if you have a 32-bit OS, and remember that the smaller the map size, the lower the probability of MAF.

History

Realism: Invictus has been under continuous development since November of 2005.
Over the years of its existence, it has given a
lot to other Civilization IV community projects, and it has incorporated even more of other people’s work. It
was never intended, and could never happen, as anyone’s personal project - at any given time of its
existence, the mod had a team of several people working on it, and it was always their collective
vision that brought it forward.